Week Twenty-Six: March 14th to 20th

Those among us not blessed with particularly strong chins must find ways to compensate. Though I do not have the weakest chin in recorded history, and most-certainly do not possess a nonexistent chin (what do the skulls of those people look like?) I find it brings out the chin-definition a bit more if I garnish it with some chin-sprout.

In this case, the sprout has reached larger proportions. I took this particular photo after concluding a longer run in which I noticed my shadow-profile several times and saw that it looked like a square-jawed caricature of myself. I had spied something like this over the past week or so, usually while running and almost always when the sun was at my back, but I assumed that could not have been my head. Now, I already have an extremely large head (dwarfed only by my father's enormous size 8-hat-wearing dome among people I have met; and have given that gene to our younger daughter, pictured in the previous post--poor girl, she will not thank me for that) but the shadow-picture I saw was so much more than a large cranium. This was a large jaw.

Add to that the fact that several times this week a breeze caught me cross-ways while running and I actually felt the tug on my beard, drastically slowing my barely-streamlined quality. Now, I have felt the drag of past beards in the water as I swam laps during Summer training, but to be caught by the chin on a run was an entirely different experience.

The beard continues to garner attention from on-lookers and chance encounters. May favorite from this week: one cashier I encountered took a long glance at it and then summed up his opinion with this question, "What is that your rally-beard, or something?" Something like that.

Week Twenty-Five: March 7th to 13th

Ah, the Springtime! The bulbs begin poking through the thawing ground; the birds begin invading the yard to catch early grubs; the beards are flowing.... And, it is the annual Elementary School rite of passage: the Spring Conferences.

Why not take a moment to discuss the progress of your child, our class, and my beard. Let us, for a moment, take pause to look back at how far we have all come this year...and would you please stop staring at my beard?

I didn't really see many parents confounded by the beard, though more and more of the kids discover it every day. It is a strange thing when a beard can sneak up on anyone, even after nearly four months of growth. Why not fluff it out this week for Conferences and see what happens. Pardon me while I pull up a few adult chairs to our round table...one for you...one for me...oh, and two kid-sized chairs for my beard.

The reactions are coming in strong from all camps, as some now join the beard-wagon and all-but shout words of encouragement about the strength and length (nearly two inches at the chin and right jawbone, though only about 1 1/2 inches at the left...?) of the beard. But just as many urge me to trim, shape, or delete it altogether. Not so fast. One of my former students, who has not seen much of me in the past year, stopped by after school the other day, leaned her head in, revealed a look of confusion, shock and revulsion, then turned and ran off, saying, "Oh my God, what happened to your face?"

Something amazing!

Oh, and a two-fer this week: our youngest daughter asked me to come to her preschool's Special Friends Day last Thursday. I am not sure where she is in the photo, but she may be that little kid behind the beard...

Week Twenty-Four: February 28th to March 6th

Maybe there are times your beard occludes your vision in such a way that you take horrible spills and ransack the skin on and around your hand. Or maybe you just shouldn't run at night....

There are sometimes harsh penalties to be paid by those who run at night, and my hand was the recipient of one of those penalties. In keeping with pop-law, this accident happened close to home, which was probably a good thing considering the blood loss. Just as with the infamous bike accident of a few years back, when an oncoming car turned quickly in front of me from a center turn lane and found me doing a tumble up and over their car, this accident also happened within sight of my home. Of course, in this accident no one yelled at me ("Boy, what the HELL are you thinking?") and no one was really around to witness it, as it occurred at about 10:30 on a weeknight.

Sometimes the sidewalk jumps up and bites you, what can I say? The hand is in recovery, though painfully scabbing over as I type. I still wear a glove to bed so I do not bleed all over our sheets and make my side look like a murder victim's chalk line. (It's already bad enough that my sweat so discolors the sheets on my side that we have to rotate and wash them a bit more frequently.) It is the rib on my right side that bothers me a bit more, and time will tell if landing on that hand and another chunk of sidewalk was enough to crack it, or just bruise it. Breathing is an issue, but the lack of bubbling, rattly fluid tells me there is at least no puncture, and I was back to running the next day, so it cannot be all that bad, right?

The beard is becoming evermore increasingly difficult to tame. Some of the mothers of students at our school asked me this week if it drove me nuts or, again, if my wife was tired of it. I told them the only tricky part was that grooming/combing this face-rag took longer than it did to push my hair into position day after day. As for my wife not enjoying it, well, her affinity for it is well-documented in past posts.

Next week? To the ruler! I fear the length is not all the same, and one must worry--or not--about uniform facial growth.